1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates to a disc drive unit configured with a plurality of disc drives as one unit, which can be used, for example, in a disc apparatus for feeding a disc (image storage media such as CDs and DVDs) to each of the plurality of disc drives. And also, this disclosure relates to a disc apparatus provided with such the disc drive unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the disc apparatus for feeding the disc (disc-like information storage media such as CDs and DVDs) to each of the plurality of disc drives, for example, an apparatus described in JP 2011-204311 A (Patent Document 1) has been conventionally known. The disc apparatus in Patent Document 1 includes a cartridge (magazine) for storing a plurality of trays each storing one disc, and a plurality of disc drives. The disc apparatus in Patent Document 1 is configured to eject any tray from the magazine, suction and hold one disc stored in the ejected tray onto a suction pad, and place the disc on the tray of any disc drive.
Since the disc apparatus in Patent Document 1 is configured to store one disc in one tray, the number of discs stored in the magazine is small. In order to increase the number of the discs stored in the magazine, it is useful to directly stack the plurality of discs without interposing the tray therebetween to reduce the number of trays.
However, in this case, the adjacent discs are brought into intimate contact with each other, and thus cannot be easily separated from each other. JP 2000-117553 A (Patent Document 2) discloses a technique for solving this problem. Patent Document 2 discloses the technique of inserting a claw into the adjacent discs, thereby separating the two discs from each other to suction and hold the separated disc onto the suction pad.